While many understand the intern to be well-off and female, the issue has traditionally been discussed in terms of class, not gender. But that’s begun to change since Schwartz’s essay. Schwartz draws a connection between unpaid office workers today and unpaid housework of mid-century married women—even when they worked outside the home, women were underpaid back then, too, and for a similar reason. They were “secondary breadwinners; they didn’t need full-time jobs,” she writes. “Any financial compensation—’pin money’—was incidental to their crucial place within the household.” And like yesterday’s housewives, according to Schwartz, today’s interns must demonstrate “flexibility, submission, gratitude.”

[…]

But even if the concern for rich women’s sense of self-worth or purpose inspires eye-rolls, is there anything progressive at all about the expansion of unpaid work? Unpaid internships may feel compulsory, and may be just that in some academic programs, but they are often unlikely to lead to paid work. The wealth and connections that are often helpful in snagging an unpaid internship may be more helpful than the internship itself in securing future success. Frequently, too, the justification for unpaid internships is that they can be educational. Yet the logistics of making sure one gets paid—doing things one would rather not do in order to have rent or at least coffee money, asking for a raise, following up with bosses when not paid—are much of what makes a first job educational.

[…]

The availability of free labor makes the same work cost less. Postings stating that interns are “needed” might indicate that their work is, well, needed. Despite what popular images might have us believe, the problem with unpaid internships isn’t that entitled young women are just hanging out in lieu of getting a job. It’s that a certain, mostly-female population is signing up for what seems like on-the-job training, with no job in sight.

And, of course, even if unpaid internships are predominantly taken by women from privileged backgrounds, they’re still a problem for everyone, because they close off opportunities for people who can’t afford to do uncompensated labor. As Paul says, this phenomenon is really something that calls for legal intervention.

Comments (61)

Similar situation: Who gets hired on Capitol Hill? Unfortunately, almost entirely people “who’ve worked on The Hill,” because, these people believe, you can’t know anything unless you’ve worked on The Hill. But if you’ve never worked on The Hill, how do you become someone with Hill experience? Why, of course, unpaid internships.

There are a lot of earnest, hard working and smart people working on the Hill, especially those on committee staffs. But overall, and especially in member offices, there’s a serious class bias against anyone who couldn’t afford to do an unpaid internship.

Hill internships aren’t unpaid – or, at least, they didn’t use to be. When I did an internship in the Senate in 2000, we got a reasonable stipend. I was living at home, so it was pretty solid cash for me, but even for people who had moved to DC for the summer to take the internship, I feel like it was enough to cover expenses.

Well, I don’t remember the details well enough to be sure, so you may be right – but remember that the internship was only for six weeks. It didn’t seem unfair to me at the time, especially given the number of internships that are totally unpaid.

I think we have different reference points for “used to be.” I had three internships in D.C. around 1990, and two of them were all but unpaid, including the one for my Congresswoman (couple hundred bucks to live in D.C. for the summer). There were a large number of women in a similar position, which I attributed to being on the left, but now I have to go read the article.

I can’t speak to Senate offices, but I served as a CoS for a member of Congress. Congressional offices get what is essentially an “allowance” to pay for equipment, district office rentals (if you don’t use space in a federal building), franking (mail and now robocalls/telephone town halls/online), some incidental expenses like travel, and salaries (but not benefits and taxes, which the House administration pays). If you pay your interns, you’re taking away money that could go to other things like staff salaries, more mail, etc. As a matter of principle, I insisted we pay our interns (even though it was a nominal amount, I think we gave them $125/week), we told them about every reception they could raid for free food, and I gave them my card to use for the Metro. So sure, I guess they got paid, but when it’s hard to rent anyplace in DC for less than $3/sq foot, and unlike NYC there’s almost no street food, it’s nowhere near anything meaningful.

And it’s a problem overall with staff in members’ offices. Committee staff–most of whom have JD’s/MPP’s/MBA’s/MA’s/PhD’s–get paid OK. But in a member’s office, the CoS is probably the only person who makes over $60K per year, the majority of the staff are between $35K and $45K, and some offices pay their legislative correspondents as little as $25K per year. In most of the country $60K is alright money. But not in DC, with the very high cost of living. And $25K isn’t anything for a full time job in most of the country. So even people who take the fulltime paid positions often get financial help from their families so they can work 60 hours a week, pay their rent and have enough money to get a burger and a couple beers most nights after they leave the office at 8:00 PM.

1) What I still can’t figure out is whether these really are such great “opportunities.” (Which, incidentally, is why I didn’t go into that angle in the post.) Does unpaid work lead to paid work? Is it all that helpful in entering a sought-after field? From survey and anecdotal info. I’ve found (but I personally have never had an unpaid internship, so that’s not entering into it), it seems not so helpful. It might be so in certain workplaces, where there are established apprenticeship-type internship programs, but these days it’s a lot of unpaid work popping up basically anywhere, with no promise of a job, and with a lot of employers wanting to see past work experience, with internships not necessarily counting. The social-justice angle as it’s usually discussed assumed these are wonderful opportunities, which is something I think we need to question. Otherwise, we reinforce the idea that companies are offering something inherently valuable when they provide these positions.

If unpaid work proves a big waste of time, this would still screw over those who took unpaid internships and couldn’t easily afford it more than it would those who did one instead of taking a fancy vacation. And if the perception is that to enter whichever fields, you first need to work for free, that’s a problem even if the reality is that (say) paid copy-editors, and not unpaid editorial interns, move up the ranks, even if many employers would prefer someone who’d held down a real summer job to someone who’d held what sounds like a fluffy unpaid post. But I’m not sure that we can apply the same formula we use when discussing the inequalities surrounding college education (where those who can afford it really, truly do have easy access to something that will help immensely in getting a job) to something as dubious as unpaid internships.

2) What I wanted to come through, aside from the general crappiness of unpaid work, was that it’s unfair even if a “princess” is the one not getting paid. This is both because some women who come across as posh don’t have the imagined trust funds/rich-and-generous parents in the first place, and also because even someone with gobs of family money who works deserves compensation. Whether someone with gobs of family money should be paid appears to be something that’s questioned when the individual is a woman, but not so much when the individual’s a man.

Regarding your #1, I think we should question the entire idea that something being a good opportunity justifies lack of pay. Apprenticeships are good opportunities. Back when employers actually trained their entry-level people (an era which long predates me but which I’m told existed), those first entry-level jobs paid people. The overseas summer research fellowship that I got when I was an undergrad was a golden opportunity that has paid off enormously, and I got paid for it.

I do know of a couple of colleges (including one in the state that I grew up in that provides full scholarships for all its students and caters primarily to poor Appalachian kids) that will pay students during their unpaid internships. That’s laudable of them, but they really shouldn’t have to do that.

Whether someone with gobs of family money should be paid appears to be something that’s questioned when the individual is a woman, but not so much when the individual’s a man.

“I think we should question the entire idea that something being a good opportunity justifies lack of pay.”

Absolutely, in full and enthusiastic agreement.

The problem, though, is also that there’s this popular assumption that unpaid internships are by definition good opportunities, that surely if they weren’t, they’d have to pay. Companies realize this, and call any scut position they want to fill without paying someone an “internship.” (Bookstores, local restaurants, you name it.) The power of the word – it sounds so pre-professional! – is such that people probably will line up who wouldn’t have done so for a low-paid (but nevertheless paid) job with the exact same description.

Yes, but: not paying people means that a company is not paying payroll taxes on those people, either. Depending on company history/industry/state doing business in, employer payroll tax is going to run from 8-15% of payroll. There is a definite state interest in this issue. And it would not be particularly difficult to include a check box on a 941: Did your company use any unpaid labor at any point in this quarter?

“And it would not be particularly difficult to include a check box on a 941: Did your company use any unpaid labor at any point in this quarter?”

which means i don’t ever expect to see it on there, because the corporatocracy will fight it tooth and nail. even better would be massive financial penalties, for falsely characterizing employee’s as contract workers, underpaying/not paying people, ect., etc. they do all this, because the odds are stacked in their favor, of ever getting caught.

i noticed that most of the unpaid internships discussed in both articles seem to be in fashion/media, two industries not deemed really “necessary” by most people: they won’t die if they miss the next issue of “Elle'”, they will if they don’t eat. it occurs to me to wonder if a part of the seeming ambivilance about unpaid internships in those industries, is connected to that commonly held view of them: they’re fluff to begin with, so who cares if someone works in them for free? same could go for unpaid political internships.

Like most workplace violations, they require a complaint from the employee. It’s rare that anyone wants to take the company they’re interning for to court. You may as well kiss any opportunity in that industry goodbye.

Point #1 is interesting too. It’s an interesting question. In many cases, I’m guessing that they’re just straight sucker bets. But in at least some fields, they seem necessary-but-not sufficient. (Anecdote alert!) My wife has generally had to compete with upwards of 200 applications even for entry-level or just above positions in library science, and there’s no question that her extensive internships at various New York museums helped (and someone without them would have a lot of trouble standing out from a field of people with similar credentials, especially if they can’t compete on experience.) It can be very difficult to know a priori what internships are generally useful and which are just scams, though.

What I wanted to come through, aside from the general crappiness of unpaid work, was that it’s unfair even if a “princess” is the one not getting paid.

As I hope I made clear, I agree 100%. People should be fairly compensated for work, whether they come from a privileged background of not.

I agree with this, I think. I’d imagine that internships don’t generally lead directly to paid employment, and that many of them don’t lead anywhere, but it really does seem like there’s fields where an internship of some sort is absolutely necessary to proceed anywhere.

In the legal field, the path to a plush position seems to be a combination of top grades at a top legal school plus internships at top firms or agencies during the summer or clerkships with judges afterwards.

At least in the past, we were most honest about the need for connections and patronage to get anywhere in life. The old boy’s network is only slightly more egalitarian but we’re much less honest about it these days. If we can’t do anything about it, can we at least stop pretending it doesn’t exist?

Yeah, legal internships are paid. I didn’t mean to use them as an example of an unpaid internship but as an area where internships help. A lot of top firms like hiring from their summer associates because they get a known quality.

The question of what internships do or don’t get you seems really tough to sort out. It’s hard to believe they wouldn’t help at all, given that they show interest in the field, and given that they’re time not spent watching TV at home. But are they more helpful than tangentially-related paid work (for the library example, shelving books, say)? There are no doubt some employers who are part of a vast conspiracy to keep jobs in the hands of rich white people, but there are also employers whose greatest fear is an entitled brat for an employee, and who will actually prefer to hire someone who, regardless of background, has worked a regular summer-job-type job.

The other thing to consider is whether unpaid internships are of much help outside of whichever very specific field they were in. Not all students end up pursuing exactly the professions they imagine they will. If you take paid internships or regular jobs, you’re at least left with the pay. Whereas an unpaid internship at a museum may not do much for you if you head off to become a paralegal.

And finally, as came up in a comment on my blog, positions of more substantial pay/power (and I know nothing of library science specifically) may not even go to those who began on the entry-level track. So even if an unpaid internship in whichever field leads to $20k entry-level work, it might not be the route to success it’s imagined to be.

I’m in the museum field and unpaid internships are the norm and are pretty much required for anyone looking for a museum career. Thus, the museum field is dominated by rich, white people, mostly women for all the reasons discussed in the article. It ought to be a huge scandal, but since everyone benefits but the least powerful, no one will ever do anything about it.

I do have one question I am not qualified to discuss. My example and the example above of Hill interns are of non-profits and government agencies. All of the legalities I have seen covered in the past on this issue discuss for-profits exclusively. (And that tends to be the go-to shield for people in my industry. “but we are non-profit. Those rules don’t apply to us.”) Does anyone know of research or discussions of this topic related to non-profits and government entities?

Unpaid internships are perhaps the most insidious way to keep certain fields closed to disadvantaged groups and in the hands of rich, white people. If you need to have parents rich enough to pay you allowance for a couple of years to enter into a certain field than the field is going to be closed to most people.

Anecdotal story: A friend from a non-prestigious (i.e., working class) background managed to land herself a prestigious internship in DC some years back.The internship was unpaid and her family didn’t have the resources to support her, though. Her solution was to work full time as a waitress when she wasn’t working her full-time internship.

While what she did was impressive, the sheer insanity of that situation means that this internship was simply not an option for 99% of people from modest backgrounds.

I was shocked when I first discovered that some of my college classmates were doing summer jobs that: 1) required living in or very, very close to NYC, and 2) didn’t pay them.

What kind of insanity is that? Even the infamous Vector Marketing/Cutco Knifes door-to-oor sales scam is a better deal than that, and Vector Marketing are some true scum of the earth.

At least in my chosen industry, interns get paid and though there are still class biases feeding into access to internships (e.g., Google doesn’t tend to look for interns at Kutztown) at least the internship-to-job path is well established and in many cases more of a goal than the actual work done on the internship.

However, the reason my industry does this isn’t charity – paying interns in IT is standard practice because it’s necessary; if they weren’t paid, they’d go get jobs not labeled as internships elsewhere. Perhaps the problem then is that the high-fashion industry is too much of a cartel for this same market pressure to work in that industry. As is generally the case with cartels, this would seem to call for legal relief – if there are portions of the high-fashion industry that cannot survive without this unpaid work I can’t say I’ll be sad to see them go.

that’s pretty much how i feel about any business, that has to rely on an unpaid/below livable wage paid workforce, to make a profit.

“As is generally the case with cartels, this would seem to call for legal relief – if there are portions of the high-fashion industry that cannot survive without this unpaid work I can’t say I’ll be sad to see them go.”

not only are they scum in general, but they put honest businesses at a disadvantage, because an honest business can’t compete with one using slave labor, and shouldn’t be forced into trying.

Agreed. Part of the problem is that it’s the interns who should be suing companies for their unpaid labor. But if they were interested in doing that, they wouldn’t have become interns in the first place. Though there was a story about someone at a fashion magazine doing that recently. Wonder how that’s going. But really what should happen is that labor law should be updated to make it clear that there is a state interest here and that the state should start bringing suits against companies employing unpaid labor. It’s just gotten ridiculous.

There really are a number of gender issues here, including the one around the gendering of different fields. I’m a woman in computer science. As some of you might be aware, computer science is hugely male-dominated. I’m interning for 10 hours/week at a startup this semester, for which I am getting paid $20/hour. Around here, I would consider this a little below average for CS/software internships, but it has the advantage that I can do it part-time during the semester rather than just full-time during the summer (and also that I’m allowed to telecommute). All the students that I know in CS/software – who are again, mostly men – would point and laugh at any company in the field that was so stupid as to think it shouldn’t pay interns.

Needless to say, the people that I know in female-dominated arts and humanities fields are in a rather different position. I think it is incredibly disgusting that any for-profit can get away with not paying interns. I don’t care how “educational” it is, these people are labor and should be compensated. I’m more ambivalent about non-profits, because I understand that a lot of them are genuinely cash-strapped and have heavy volunteer labor forces anyway, and an internship is really formalized volunteering at those places.

I think that even at non-profits (social justice orgs, of all people, should understand labor issues, though that’s not always the case), if you’re going to have unpaid internships, they shouldn’t be allowed to be full-time. If you want somebody to do unpaid labor for you, you have to allow them time for actually earning a living as well. If you want them to be full-time, pay them.

The comparison to attitudes toward middle-class working women decades ago is a good one that I hadn’t thought of before.

The disciplines in question have no financial support that could be used to pay people. By contrast, unpaid internships are foreign in the sciences – where one can obtain grant funding.

I suppose that you could advocate simply shutting down disciplines that don’t get external support, but I’m not at all confident that this would be a net plus. Now, advocating for more support for the humanities would be a different matter…

I’m not even talking about academia-based work (though I do support more money for the humanities). I’m talking about work at corporations, like the startup that I’m interning for, or the biotech company that someone in the biomedical sciences might intern for. A professor of the arts or English might not be able to pay a summer assistant because they aren’t rolling in grant money, but a for-profit fashion firm or a magazine or newspaper ought to pay interns.

Well, that depends on what you mean. Research courses for credit certainly exist – but in that case you’re getting something (namely, credit towards graduation) rather than working for free.

Generally speaking these tend to fall into the “teach people how to do research” category rather than the “get research done” category. The work actually gets completed in the summer, when this isn’t an option and you pay people, or paid during the year if the initial project turns out well.

I’ve worked in a number of scientific labs in a variety of contexts and I’ve never seen undergrads get paid during the school year no matter how good their work is or how much responsibility they take on. They may or may not be paid during the summer. It’s true you can get credit for this work, but the real reason people do it is to improve their chance to get into med school/grad school.

For what it’s worth, in the STEM fields at my universities, I’ve never seen undergraduates not get paid. The exception that proves the rule is the student working for a professor who ran out of money and who gave him credit instead, for 4 hours a week.

When I did undergraduate research, I either got paid (the university had a $9/hour minimum when I was an undergrad, in the mid-’00s) or got credits. You could choose which option you wanted (though if you wanted money and the hiring professor didn’t have funds to pay, you had to apply for an award through the undergraduate research office). Most people wanted the money.

Following up on Marc’s comment, I’ve certainly seen unpaid, uncredited programs before, and even been (lightly) involved. These have felt quite different from the programs discussed in the original post, for a few reasons.

The biggest was that undergrad research programs generally aren’t substitute labour. It takes quite a lot of work to find a project that undergrads can be involved in, teach them the basics, and get them going. I’ve never heard of anyone claiming that having an undergrad research associate would help them get stuff done. Indeed, during my job search I talked about some projects that seemed shovel-ready for undergrads, and was uniformly warned that this was a time sink that I shouldn’t get into until I was pretty happy with my tenure case.

Its possible things are different in other areas – I’ve mostly spent time in math/physics/CS/stats departments, where there isn’t a huge amount of unskilled gruntwork.

I would claim that having an undergraduate research associate has helped my research. I usually have 3-5 undergraduates along with graduate students. Several of my current graduate (and best) students started out as undergraduate researchers

My experience is in the biological sciences, where there’s definitely a lot more gruntwork than some other fields. Nor would I claim that even this work is precisely equivalent to internships in the fashion industry or capital hill (though the core exchange of providing unpaid labor for future opportunities is the same). I’m just disputing Marc’s contention that “unpaid internships are foreign in the sciences.”

“Needless to say, the people that I know in female-dominated arts and humanities fields are in a rather different position.”

as opposed to your (and mine) boring IT and accounting areas. every fashion design major is convinced they’re going to be the next “big thing”, and will happily spend their time, unpaid, interning at some big fashion house. the closest 99.99% of them will ever get to being the next “big thing”, will be designing baby clothes for their sister’s kid. the same goes for all the “next great american” author’s/sports reporters/actors, etc., but don’t try and tell them that, because, well, they just know! and that’s what those companies count on.

you and i, fortunately, found something we (well, i assume you do) enjoy, are pretty good at, and happens to be something in demand, and that not that many other people are interested in, because it’s not glamorous (though it has its moments of low comedy).

When my Dad started out as an articling lawyer in the early 50’s, he was paid the princely sum of $150 a month. My Mom made $250 a month as a nurse at the time. Why the discrepancy?

The law firm he worked for was run by “gentlemen” who had private incomes, and they expected their juniors also to have incomes independent of the practice of law. My dad, who had put himself through law school digging ditches in the summer, sucked it up and later became a partner. And paying juniors a pittance was no more.

I can’t help but think that it is morally depraved to amass wealth by exploiting under-paid (or unpaid!) professional staff. But I suppose this is a minor consideration to those who do it.

Incidentally, when my son was casting around in his junior year for career options, he looked seriously at the law as an option. My Dad’s response: “Why the fuck would he want to do that?” – as all the firms work their juniors like galley slaves, and the route to partner is limited to the truly exceptional.

It seems this was good advice, considering the tragic situation in the profession now – with a massive over-supply of entry-level lawyers distorting the market and encouraging venal behavior like unpaid work.

the only difference between slavery and unpaid work is that the slave owner was responsible for the basic care and feeding of his investment, if he wanted a return on his investment. the non-paying “employer” doesn’t have to care, that’s your problem.

While this is a difference, it is certainly not the only difference. I’d think that the largest difference is that employers of unpaid interns do not own their interns. The interns can quit whenever they like. They can’t be bought and sold. They have the right to participate in the political process.

I wonder if many elites view unpaid internships as a sort of training ground for trophy wives. More than a few men have fantasies about having a glamorous wife with some sort of “artistic” but low-paying career because the ability to support a wife in show a profession is a sign of wealth.

I’m only thinking that this might be the case because when searching for singles events late last year I ran across one where the men had to work in finance or business while the women had to have a career in fashion, the arts or something similar. The ad even reference Carrie Bradshaw’s relationship with Mr. Big on Sex and the City. After getting over my disgust, I realized that it kind of made sense in away because being able to support a partner in certain fields is a type of status symbol and thats what the event was about. Unpaid internships might serve a similar function, at least unintentionally, in the same way.

I’d bet it’s about more than just status. If you’re a big career guy, you probably don’t want your life partner to have a career that will make demands on your life or time. It’s inconvenient and it may make you feel less important. I don’t think this is the reason these intern positions exist, though perhaps the same gender norms are involved in both processes.

I think its about status either way. Big career guys, especially those with sexist tendencies or who are sexist, want a life partner who will be there for them. There is also a certain amount of status that comes with being able to support somebody with a career thats glamorous in one way but not much in terms of income. Its probably one reason why a lot of European aristocrats liked to take ballet dancers as lovers.

A while ago, the floundering company I worked for talked about bringing in an unpaid intern to do some of the shit work, like writing product releases. It would have been an utter waste of time for the person involved and would have meant nothing but a line on a resume. Fortunately, as with most things there, they didn’t follow through. The point is, they were motivated by a desire to save money and nothing else.

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